Category: Travel

Bear Flag Republic Part I: San Francisco

We just got back from a fantastic and epic vacation to California, including San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, and Lake Tahoe. The California Republic always seemed like a mythic land to me growing up in the cold northeast, and the years I lived there were some of the best times of my life. I’m glad I had the chance to go back and share it with my kids, and I’m happy that the land has lost none of it’s enchanting character and charm.

The week leading up to the trip was busy as things tend to be. In addition to the usual work and trying to beat the heat, Denis and Sarah were in town for a visit. Jeannie and the girls and I met them for lunch in Times Square Tuesday. It was nice and the kids won a bunch of Dora schwag in a promotion and gave it to my niece Anna. I’ve been working with Blick to get our outsourced development set up. More on that in a future post. Wednesday I flew thru the week’s yardwork including pulling weeds from under the hedges, as we’d be gone the coming weekend.

We got up way early Friday to catch an 8:00 AM flight. The whole getting to the airport and onto the plane process went smoothly. I meant to nap on the plane, but wound up getting into the book I was reading. We got a great view of Yosemite from the plane, a nice bit of foreshadowing. The first thing we did when we got there was cruise down to Silicon Valley to check out our old haunts. We had lunch in a burrito place near Jeannie’s old job, drove by old house in Redwood City and in Palo Alto, past my old office and the hospital where Lizzy was born, and few other landmarks. We ended up the tour by parking near Stanford parcel B and hiking up the hill to the big radiotelescope. We didn’t make it all the way to the dish because the kids were tired but we got high enough to get a good view of the bay.

Our hotel was near the airport in South San Francisco. It was nice enough and conveniently located. The big surprise was the weather. Just as in NYC it’s been super hot, in SF it’s been cool, to the point where they haven’t really had a summer. It was in the 50’s and 60’s and foggy the entire time we were there. That evening we went into the city and had dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf at one of the seafood restaurants. The kids loved all the silly tourist trap stores – magnets, posters, socks, left handed things. We got a bunch of seashells at the place where they sell seashells by the seashore. They also dug the sea lions, although the population there is still low compared to what it’s been. I guess they’ve swum south until the weather breaks.

Saturday the plan was to go the Exploratorium. On the way we stopped at the vista point on the SF side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The kids got their national park passports stamped there for the first of many times. The Exploratorium itself was a lot of fun. An interactive science museum full of hands-on exhibits, it had lots of cool stuff to explore about geometry, physics, color, sound, light, magnetism, etc. We ended up spending the whole day there until it closed at 5:00. There was even some origami stuff including a couple models by our friend Robert, and book in the gift shop called Origami American Style by John Montroll. I have to ask him if it’s legit; I’d never heard of it and it’s not from his regular publisher.

After the museum closed we walked around the Palace of Fine Arts and the pond and gardens. Then we drove up to twin peaks (the highest point in SF) to try and take in the view. We could see the radio towers from below, but by the time we got to the top of the hill the clouds had closed in and the view was just a cold windy white sheet. On the way down again we stopped at a park near Haight-Ashbury that had a hilltop just a bit lower. This was below the clouds and so we had a great view of the city and the bay and a fun little hike.

We ended up the evening back at Fisherman’s Wharf and dined at a different seafood restaurant. On the way we happened across an arcade of antique and classic coin-op machines ranging from Pac-Man and Galaxian back to 100-year-old player piano mechanical orchestras with built-in wind and percussion sections. Those were really fun and if I ever get silly rich I’m gonna buy me one.

On the way out of that we encountered a waterfront naval museum. This was something I always wanted to check out when I lived there but never got around to it. The kids wanted to take the tour for the submarine, and so we did. It was really cool. A 300-foot long, diesel-powered WWII vessel, it was crammed from stern to stem machinery and living quarters. Unbelievable to think 80 or so men could live in such a confined space. Even the officer’s quarters were very cramped. Not a good place to be if you’re over 6 feet tall.

Sunday we drove across the Golden Gate and spent the day in the Marin Headlands. Hiked around a bunch of places with excellent view of the bay and SF. Went out to the lighthouse at Bonita Point, across a swaying footbridge on which only two people at a time are allowed to cross. The sun came out for a spell and all was deep bright azure! Went to Rodeo beach and dipped our feet in the cold, cold Pacific Ocean. Walked up another trail to look down on the ocean from the cliffs. Bought a tin of chocolate in one of the gift shops because I liked the design on the box. Once we had our fill of hiking we cruised down to Sausalito and had snack by waterfront and enjoyed the scene at the harbor for a while.

For dinner we met up with friends Japantown. There was a street fair with Cuban bands going on when we arrived. We went by the Paper Tree, an amazing origami supply store, but it was closed. We walked around the Japantown mall, and we checked out the various stores, with the kids looking for hamster erasers (I don’t know, they’re some thing from Japan) and me looking at anime robot kits and samurai swords. The kids bought some Totoro dolls and I got a neat little paper robot kit. Not exactly origami, but related. Had an excellent dinner that included sushi, tempura and fried baby octopus. Finished the evening the hotel hot tub.

Monday we began the bear-oriented part of the trip. After stocking up on supplies we lit out for the famous Yosemite National Park. Jeannie and I had been there a few times while we lived in California, including one unforgettable trip in the winter in which we cross-country skied Badger Pass the whole time. We’d also been there a couple times in the fall, but this was our first trip in high summer and the first time for the kids. It’s a really fantastic place with just mind-boggling scenery, perhaps number one of any place I’ve ever been (or maybe a close second to the Grand Canyon) in terms of sheer geological grandeur and epic scale. More on that in Part II.

Camping 2010 Pics

Last weekend I went camping with bunch of friends. It’s become an annual tradition and the group grew so big we split into to two groups a few years back. We this year both groups came back together for the same weekend, so it was a huge, great time. Best camping trip so far, in fact. The kids are old enough now we can pretty much let them run around without worrying too much. Saturday I slept in, and when I got up went to my brother’s site, asking if my kids were there. No, but would you like some coffee and eggs? Went down to the next site where my friend Nick was staying. Same thing, no kids, but here’s some breakfast. Finally caught up to them across the road at Erik’s site. Best thing of all: no rain. We stayed until Sunday evening and until finally few drops convinced us to finish packing the car.

There and Back Again

Last week we took a trip upstate to visit friends and family, staying with my parents for a few days. It was pretty low key as far as these things go, nice and relaxing. Went up to my brother-in-law’s house one day and went swimming in his pool. Enjoyed a parade and fireworks on the 4th of July. Saw a nice handful of classic cars, and great fireworks show right in the field behind the local school, right over our heads as spread out on the lawn. Best fireworks I’ve seen in years.

Now that we’re home I wish we’d stayed longer and did more. We have a long list of things we’d like to do and see there with the kids. Fort Niagara, Toronto, etc. Maybe next year we’ll take a tour of upstate NY and Ontario as our main vacation. We did get to the Albright Knox art gallery, which I hadn’t been to in maybe 20 years. It has a pretty excellent collection of contemporary and modern art and I was happy that some of my favorite pieces were still there, including the mirror house. On the other hand the upstairs halls including the sculpture court were mainly empty, which was disappointing. Walked around the lake at Delaware park too.

We left the kids with my parents for a few days. Had a stopover in Albany on the ride home to have dinner with Martin. It was a nice enjoyable trip home, listening mainly to hippie rock. We crossed the Hudson up near Albany and took the Taconic home, avoided the traffic on 87 and the Tappen Zee. (I hate every Tap I see from Tappen A to Tappen Z.) We thought we’d have time to relax and hang out, sans kids, but no. It was a busy, busy workweek. My project is under alot of pressure these days. On top of it we had a major heat wave with temperatures getting up to 104. I worked at home that day and only went outside to move the sprinkler around the yard, but even being out for a few minutes was pretty intense.

At last on Friday evening the weather broke and it was merely in the upper 80’s hazy and muggy. Jeannie and took an epic walk around Manhattan, starting in times square, doing downtown. We went along the High Line, in Chelsea, which is a really cool thing. It had once been a network of elevated railroad tracks that supplied butchers in the meatpacking district with carcasses to carve up into meat. It has been abandoned for many years and overgrown with weeds. The city has turned into a long, narrow park, basically a pedestrian walkway that runs from 20th street down to the west village. On either side of the boardwalk are gardens of wildflowers — basically the same weeds, but well tended. It’s a surprisingly effective setup and the whole feels really peaceful and special.

When we got to the end of that, we weren’t too far from the waterfront. When I worked at Radical Media there was a pier nearby I used to walk to sometimes. It was a bit run down and in later days it was fenced off. Well the city as turned this into a park too, and you can walk out the end and see the Verrazano Bridge and Statue of Liberty, and even a tall ship. When we were done there we got dinner are a Mexican restaurant, and the walked thru the NYU campus and to the East Village. We finished off at St. Mark’s place, which is where I lived when I first moved to NYC many years ago. At that time it was all bong shops, but the city has become so upscale that I wondered if it’d be all changed now. It was refreshing to see it was just as seedy as it had always been.

The kids home again, all nice and tanned. They had a great time with all the grandparents, aunts and uncles. I guess they did lots of swimming. Ah summertime, and the living is easy.

Summer’s Here and the Time is Right

The season has progressed to full on summer. Finally made it to a long weekend, a much deserved and needed break after rather chaotic spell at work. Been trying to get our software release out the door, filling in for my boss who was on vacation, as well as running things since our project manager was gone too. Dealing with uncooperative directors of other projects, and that all-time favorite of software development, fixing other people’s bugs. Well all’s well that ends well I suppose and we met our deadline.

We went upstate to see Martin and Kathleen and Charlie over the weekend. Very nice hang. Went swimming, which was great for my back; the first time since the winter it really felt good. Unfortunately the car ride home undid that. We also watched the Queen open the British parliament on CSPAN. This was pretty random, but the girls are Anglophiliac these days because of Harry Potter, so we thought they like to see a real Queen in action commanding the Lords and Commons. The weirdest part was when the chief constable shouted “Hats off, strangers” before the Queen entered Parliament, predicted beforehand by a very blasé announcer.

I did some research into the wacky traditions of British government, and learned some interesting factoids. There is a movement afoot to replace the phrase “strangers” with “visitors” to be less anachronistic. The word strangers dates from the time of Cromwell. Smoking in parliament was banned in 1696, although snuff is available to all members at the public expense. Wearing of armor was banned in 1313. There’s a list of words banned from discourse that includes “blackguard”, “git”, and “traitor”.

Here’s some pictures from my yard and garden from 2 or 3 weeks back. The roses and fig tree are doing awesome, and we even have some ripe strawberries.

Californigami

I just got back from a great trip to San Francisco for the Pacific Coast Origami Conference. It was Jeannie’s idea for me to go, and I must say I was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing until I actually started the journey. But it was great and she deserves a big thanks. The conference went from Friday to Sunday and was a ton of fun. I lived in the Bay Area from the mid-90’s to the early 2000’s, but haven’t been back for a few years, so I also spent an extra day visiting old haunts and catching up with friends.

I must be getting older. Old people are famous for getting up early. It didn’t really bother me to have to get up at 4:30 to get to the airport in time. It felt like getting up for a normal day of work. A few random skipped meals didn’t bother me either, nor did the time zone change or lack of sleep. I cashed out the last of my frequent flier miles from the 90’s when I flew 100,000 miles a year and got an upgrade to business class. It was awesome! The seat was like a living room recliner chair. Since I’m well over 6 feet tall it made a big difference for me being able to nap on the plane.

I was flying alone and wanted everything to fit in my carry on including the models for my exhibit. For my exhibit I made a new batch of models from the designs I know well; sort of a greatest hits collection. These included my Elephant, Moose, Lizard, Turtle, Balloon, UFO, Luv Bug and Loon.

The Pacific Coast Origami Conference (PCOC) is smaller than the New York convention, but a bunch of friends showed up, including some NYC people like Jan and Tony, and the M.I.T. crowd including Brian, Jason, Aviv, Andrea and Tian, who are smart and geeky enough to be fun to hang out with, and others like Eric G, Jared, and Nathan. Brian makes lots of puns and Jason quotes Monty Python enthusiastically and inaccurately and sings contagiously. Andrea has moved to San Mateo and is working for Oracle and Aviv was out there for an interview. Nathan is done college and living in SF working as a school teacher. And so it goes.

I stayed at the hotel where the conference was, which made it pretty convenient. We had some really good Thai food in Japan Town after wandering around in an indecisive group looking for a place Robert Lang recommended, but knew neither the name or location. I bought some really nice origami paper and won a sheet of handmade origamido paper for participating in a folding challenge.

While I was there I folded (among other things) a new original model: an Eve robot to go with Brian’s Wall-E. I taught a class which was a hit. I’m working on a book and brought a whole stack of diagrams, hoping people would fold them and give me feedback. Everyone wanted to fold my Turtle since it was in the model menu, and so I taught that from memory while a few people folded from diagrams on the side.

I’d forgotten what a beautiful city SF is. So mellow and picturesque, especially compared to New York. Saturday morning I took an epic walk. I went from the hotel across town, down the crookedest block of Lombard Street, up to Coit Tower, and then down and around to the waterfront, Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf. I had planned on riding the cable car back to the hotel, but when I got there the line was way too long and there was a bad guitarist playing guitar and singing badly to try and get tips from the people in queue. So I walked back up to the hotel.

Monday I rented a car and drove down 280 to Silicon Valley. I had lunch with my friend Wanda in Palo Alto. It was great to see her and catch up. It was a beautiful day and fun to see my old neighborhood. I went for a hike at a place called Windy Hill, which is just up at the top of the hills from there. The ride up is a crazy switchback road thru redwood forests. From the top you can look down and see Stanford, Moffett Field and the whole bay, and even San Francisco off in the distance. Turn around and you see the Pacific Ocean out over the hills to the west.

Ah, my heart is torn in two. I loved living there and love the land and the climate and the culture and people and everything about the place and would love to go back.

In other news, Lizzy got her cast off the day I left. She was born in California and fantasizes about going to college at Stanford as her destiny. I tell her get good grades. She’s with me in pining to move back. I suppose if the right opportunity comes up. But then there’s reality of there here and now.

The last thing the happened at work before I left was that I packed up my office. My whole project moved to a new floor. I flew the red eye overnight Monday and worked at home yesterday, so today I got in to see my new space. It’s much nicer than my old one. It’s a corner office with windows on three walls and a view of Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square. The movers didn’t take my chair (which was a nice one that I brought with me from Nick when I joined the platform group), and my colleagues told me the chairs all were gone and lost. But I went up there and another guy had appropriated it, and gave it back without me having to get too insistent. Another thing, my company just announced extra days off for everyone for the holidays, so it looks like I can take a good long xmas vacation this year.

Coming soon: pictures!

Home Again

We were away last week on vacation, visiting family upstate and then spending a few days at home to rest and get caught up on things. Spent a whole week wearing no socks and shoes.  We visited Denis and Sara for Anna’s first birthday party. Everyone in Jeannie’s family made the trip of from NYC. All the grandkids together in one place, a rare event. We all went swimming in Denis’s pool, and Lizzy learned how to do a proper dive off the diving board, which was a big thrill. The next we shuffled off to visit my parents. One highlight was a family picnic for all the cousins on my mum’s side. Another was a trip to the zoo. One evening Jeannie and I took a visit to our old college for a walk around the campus. On the last day we caught up with Martin and Kathleen. Little Charlie is getting big!

New Mexico Trip

We recently got back from a trip New Mexico, visiting my brother Jim and his family.  They live in the rugged and storied town of Los Alamos.  It was a great time, good to see them and catch up, and we did some sightseeing and lots of hiking in the north-central part of the state.  I’ve never been to that part of the country before and I must say the landscapes are spectacular.  Very different from California, Nevada or Arizona.  Incredible color palettes between the rocks and sky and vegetation.  Also lots of layers of history and culture, and some really good food to boot.

Despite the fact that you can get to the other side of the world from New York City in just a few hours, there is no real convenient way to get to Los Alamos.  The best you can do is two flights and then a two-hour drive.  So Friday was travel day.  We got up super early but the kids did alright.  Got to the airport.  Stood in line.  Waited.  Flew to Denver.  Waited.  Flew to Albuquerque.  Got a car.  Drove off thru the desert, where things started to get interesting.  Up to Santa Fe and then across the Rio Grande for the climb up to Los Alamos.  Lots of mind-blowing scenery on the way.  Total travel time was just about twelve hours, which the same as it takes to get to India.

One you get there, you get a sense of why it’s so hard to reach, why there are so few roads.  Geography is the crucial factor.  The town is situated on an outcropping of finger-like mesas separated by deep gorges, halfway up a much larger structure — the remains of a supervolcano that erupted 100,000 years ago and is roughly 100 miles in circumference.  The town of course grew out of the Manhattan Project, and most of the houses there were built in the 50’s, and there’s really no new places to build, so it has the feeling of an island.  Alot of houses are hanging right off the edges of the cliffs.  Friday afternoon we took a little walk around their neighborhood, and Sunday we took a longer hike down into the local canyons.  Los Alamos is the only town I’ve ever been to where they give you a combination street map and trail map.

We spent the weekend mainly hanging out at Jim & Una’s house.  There was fresh snow Saturday morning and again on Easter Sunday, although it got considerably warmer both afternoons.  The kids had a great time playing with their cousins. We all built a big tower out of Duplos together.  After a while we thought it was too tall and wobbly so we separated it into two towers.  Which we then connected with a bridge.  Then this grew too unstable and we took the whole thing down and built a massive train track setup that ran from the living room thru the dining room, front hall, side hall and down into the kid’s room, where it turned around. The thing had multiple stations, buildings and vehicles.  It was so big we actually used lego trains to transport legos from one end of the thing to the other.

Friday night we went out to an excellent local restaurant, the Blue Window.  The rest of the weekend Jim made some fantastic dinners.  We also had alot of great southwestern food on the trip, all kinds of burritos other things with red and green chili sauce.

Saturday we went for a swim at the local aquatic center, which was really nice and the kids enjoyed.  We also went to the Bradbury Science Museum, which is a cool public display of the history and continuing research of the Lab.  They have replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man, the first two a-bombs.  I felt kinda like the place needed a Slim Pickens style mechanical rodeo horse in the shape of a bomb that you could ride for a quarter.

Jim works in a part of the lab that has nothing to do with weapons and explosions or reverse-engineering crashed alien spaceships, but rather with genetics and protenomics, as a software developer doing informatics and scientific visualization of data.  Pretty cool stuff.  He showed me a book which he worked on that lists the genomes of various strains of the HIV virus along with the protein sequences they encode, and from that a sort of family tree and history of mutations of the virus.  The purpose of this research is to help other medical researches working on a cure for HIV.  At home he built his own TiVo using a Linux box that looked like a piece of stereo equipment, running a bit of software call mythTV.  We watched a few episodes of the classic 60’s show Star Trek, which I haven’t seen in well over twenty years.  I’d forgotten how good (in a cheesy way) that original series was.

Monday we started touring around the state, mainly hiking and looking at rocks.  In the morning Una took us to meet her horse Whitney in a horse park out on another mesa, and the girls got to go for a ride.  Then we drove up to the rim of the supervolcano and down into the caldera, which is a massive crater miles across, with smaller volcanoes (actually full-sized mountains) dotting the high plain.  Everything was still covered with snow, and we saw a herd of elk off grazing in the distance, a bunch of tiny specks.  On the way down, we drove by a local ski place that looked pretty fun and challenging.

That afternoon we drove down, first to White Rock, where a scenic overlook offers spectacular if a bit scary views for miles in every direction, including into the valley of the Rio Grande (still over a mile above see level at this point).  Then is was on to Bandelier National Monument, home of ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings.  They’re set in a valley canyon like those of Los Alamos, but around the crater a few miles to the southwest.  The cave dwellings were built into to soft rock of the cliffside 500 to 1000 years ago and have been remarkably well preserved and/or restored.  The kids had a blast checking out the and climbing up and down ladders, and we all got a good sense of that life here must have been like in pre-Spanish times.  Una is very knowledgeable out the local geography and history and was a terrific guide.

That evening the train Duplos were replaced by a Rube Goldberg style marble rolling system.

Tuesday Jim and Una were both busy, so they lent us their truck and we struck out on our own.  Our first stop was another area of Bandelier.  This one was right at the bottom of the canyon from town.  It was a hike up and across the on top of a mesa and then back along the cliffside on a narrow snaking trail.  I had Michelle hold my hand pretty much the whole second half of the trip.  This site was much less excavated but perhaps more interesting because in addition to ruins of round villages and a bunch of caves there were some good petroglyphs and the views were spectacular.  Around 11:15 AM we heard a big explosion echo across the countryside.  Una says they blow stuff up at the lab from to time.

Then we drove north a good hour to Ghost Ranch, our main stop of the day. The place is famous for being the site of a famous dinosaur dig in the 1940’s, the discovery of Ceolphysis, a small carnivore.  They had a neat little dinosaur museum and an anthropology museum full of pottery, blankets and arrowheads.  The geography is pretty different up there but also very beautiful. We went for a hike up towards the very improbable-looking Chimney Rock.  Then we drove up the road a piece to this little open-air museum that had a bunch of cool stuff about the geology and the ages of the various layers of multicolored rock.  It turns out this was also right near where Georgia O’Keefe lived and did a lot of paintings, so the were a gallery of her art, including some great semi-abstract landscapes.  The last place for the day was Echo Amphitheatre.  This is a natural rock amphitheatre at the top end of a canyon inlet with really cool echoes.  The kids really loved it.

On way back I got pulled over bogus traffic stop, a blatant trap where the cop claimed I failed to observe a no-passing sign for going around a car making a left in the second lane.  This was on an Indian Reservation, and there were a few weird things about it.  The cop claimed he could bring up my license in his SCMODS, but since he was such a nice guy he wouldn’t write me up for that.  Gee thanks.  As he was going thru his spiel, a wind came up so strong he ran back to his SUV.  At least we got to see some real tumbleweeds rolling by.  He came back with an abbreviated rap, and told me to sign the ticket without explaining it, which I’m pretty sure is not legit.  When I read it later it said sighing it is an admission of guilt and I waive my right to trail, just go ahead send a check.  Hurm.  Well if I signed the other place that would’ve meant I agree to wait in jail at the reservation until a Judge happens to come along.  Yeesh.  Literally highway robbery.

Wednesday the whole lot of us rode on down to Albuquerque.  We checked out a couple more sights on the way.   The first was a place called Tent Rock National Monument, which was another canyon valley, this one full of rocks shaped like Kremlinesque domes and cones.  This one was really in the middle of nowhere and getting there involved a long dirt road.  We stopped for lunch at a casino truckstop diner. Chicken fried steak with green chili.  Yum.  Closer to Albuquerque was Petrogylph National Monument, a series of hillsides of black tumbled rocks full of ancient drawings and carvings.  The edge of town was right at the bottom of the park, and you could look out at the vast sprawl of the town.

After this we checked into our hotel, and old style casita in the heart of the Old Town district.  The place was quaint and cozy with a quiet little courtyard.  Within walking distance was the original 18th century church and town square and bunch of buildings of similar age that are now mostly shops and restaurants.  Also running right thru this neighborhood was the historic Route 66.  We had dinner at a great place.  Most everyone else had steak or other red meat, but I had a red chili pasta that was our of this world.  Also excellent Margaritas.

Thursday we decided to take a drive up the old mining trail in the mountains to the east of town.  One mining museum was closed, although there was a large steam locomotive on display outside.   Another one was very eclectic and featured all kinds of relics from over 100 years ago, including lots of blue glass bottles, as well as large collection of minerals including many grades of turquoise and its ore, and even a giant fossil femur from a Brontotherium, a prehistoric member of the rhinoceros family related to the Baluchitherium.

Then we drove up to Sandia peak, which looks down on the high plain of the Rio Grande valley from an elevation of 12,000 feet.  We got lunch in right up there (green chili burger), with the observation deck view out the window.  We walked around and checked out the various vistas, but it was too cold to stay long.  That evening we walked around the old town some more, buying souvenirs and having another excellent dinner.  This time chili rellenos for me.

Friday morning we got to the airport bright and early and said our goodbyes.  We were a bit concerned because the Weather Channel called for a chance of snow in Denver, where we’d have to make our connection to NYC.  Little did we know it would take us almost 36 hours to finally make it home.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such extremes of weather in such a short period of time.  There was snow a few time is in the trip, but since the elevation was so high, it got pretty mild in the day, at least down around five or six thousand feet.  Now today back home summer has come early and it’s 96 degrees out.  Luckily we finished off the bulk of our spring yardwork yesterday so right now I’m inside trying to stay cool until a bit later in the afternoon when the sun isn’t so strong.  My main goal for today is to take my old ’67 Mustang out for a short ride.  I tried last week to turn it over but the battery was dead.  Today the battery is fully charged, so it’s time to give it a try, but it’s so hot out I might not bother.  I’ll let you know what I decide and how it goes.

Coming soon: vacation pictures!

Long Way Home

I just got back from a great vacation in New Mexico, visiting my brother and his family.  More on that soon, including lots of photos.  For now I want to tell about my adventure getting home.

Like Santa without Rudolf we left Albuquerque flying blindly into the heart of a massive snowstorm, heading to Denver to make a connection to New York.

Our flight out of Denver pulled out from the gate on time, but as we were waiting for our turn to take off, the rain turned to snow. We taxied off to the de-icing station and back, and by the time we were at the front of the takeoff queue again the pilot decided we needed another de-icing. The snow turned heavy and we taxied back to the de-icing station a third time.  By this time an army of snowplows had been dispatched and it looked like they were only landing planes. After three hours of back and forth they finally closed the airport for takeoffs.  Then there was a queue to get back to the gate so that took another hour and a half before we could get off the plane. By this time it was dark and the snow had turned back to rain.

Meanwhile the pilot was rather unhelpful with infrequent and inaccurate updates, and the chief stewardess, who was a dude, grew hostile and insulting to the passengers as time went on. After the second de-icing the announcement came for everyone to get back to their seats immediately, breaking up a long line to use the one and only bathroom in coach.  But then the plane sat there for another half hour or more. From then on people just ignored the crew and things got a bit chaotic. One stewardess was nice and took a little extra concern over whether the kids are alright, which they were (thank you).

When we finally got off the plane our flight was canceled (although the plane took of bound for L.A. soon after) and there was no one from the airline to help us. We couldn’t really go anywhere because the kids were exhausted. The line at customer service about a quarter mile away already had hundreds of people waiting anyway. Luckily Jeannie was really heads up on the phone as went off in search of food. United was offering to rebook people on a flight on Sunday, but she pushed and got us on a Delta flight for the next morning to Kennedy. Then we got a hotel room, a cab, and finally we got to crash for the night close to midnight. I guess we were pretty lucky. By the time Jeannie got off the phone, the Delta flight was full. By the time we got to the hotel, there were no more rooms available.

Saturday at dawn we were on the bus back to the airport thru raging wind and snow and our prospects looked pretty bleak. Luckily the snow turned to rain and then that lightened up, so when the plane took off on time it was a huge relief. When we got to NYC, we found out that our luggage was waiting for us at LaGuardia, so we swung by and picked it up on our way home. So all’s well that ends well.

But the most exciting part was landing at Denver in severe gusts of wind. Literally seconds before were about to land, the plane hit a huge air pocket and lurched down and to the side. For a moment I thought it was a particularly bumpy landing with a big bounce, but by the time I realized what was happening the plane was in a steep climb. We never actually touched down, although we came within a few feet or maybe even inches. It’s no exaggeration to say we almost crashed, and the quick reaction of the pilot probably saved us. About 45 minutes later the airport had changed the direction of the runways around and we did a second, successful landing. The whole cabin broke into applause.